1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a wafer block magazine for a short-time intermediate storage of wafer blocks in plants for making and processing wafer blocks.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Wafer blocks, sometimes also called sweets blocks, are an intermediate product which is made in the wafer or sweets industry and consists of fragile, crisp, brittle, rectangular wafer sheets, which have a maximum moisture content of to 4,-,0 and in dependence on the production line are processed to form a great variety of wafer products or wafer-filled products.
Wafer sheets processed to form wafer blocks belong to wafers of that kind which in an asbaked, still warm state and when cooled to room temperature are crisp, brittle and fragile and have in the end product a maximum moisture content of 1% to 4%. Examples of such fragile and brittle wafers made on an industrial scale are rectangular wafer sheets, as well as round wafer sheets, paper-thin sheets and other so-called flat wafers, also wafer cakes, which in the wafer or sweets industry are called low hollow wafers and consist of halves of hollow bodies, which have the shape of nuts, eggs, acorns, cubes, cylinders, and the like, which halves are joined by flat webs to form large wafer cakes, as well as cast hollow wafers, such as cast wafer cornets, cast wafer cups, cast wafer figures, and the like.
These wafers must be distinguished from those wafers which are made in the wafer industry and owing to a high sugar content (up to 35% are plastically deformable in an as-baked or hot state and only as they are cooled assume a fragile, crisp, brittle consistency and in the end product have a moisture content of 1% to 4%. Examples of such wafers made on an industrial scale are rolled wailer cornets and wafer rolls, which are made in that individual flat wafers or flat wafer pieces are rolled up in a warm, plastically deformable state and are then permitted to cool down, or hollow rods or wafer rolls, which are made in that an endless baked thin wafer strip is helically wound in a plastically deformable state with overlapping convolutions around a cylindrical mandrel to form a tube, which is cut to length and permitted to cool down.
A further kind of wafers consists of wafers which are made from a wafer dough having a high egg content (10% to 50%) and which in an as-baked state and when cooled to room temperature are soft and elastic and in the end product have a moisture content in excess of 8%.
In the wafer industry it is usual to make and process the wafers of the kind described in highly automated production lines, each of which is specifically designed for a single end product.
In an example of such a production line comprising a plant for making and processing wafer blocks, liquid wafer dough is baked in a fully automatic baking machine, in most cases described as wafer-baking oven, to form large-size, thin, rectangular, brittle wafer sheets, which are taken from the wafer-baking oven and cooled in a wafer sheet cooler and are then conveyed to a wafer sheet-coating machine, in which they are coated, e.g., with a fatty cream, and stacked to form cream-filled wafer blocks. The wafer blocks are subsequently cooled to solidify the cream and to increase the coherence in each block. The wafer blocks which have left the wafer block cooler are delivered to a wafer block, slicing apparatus, in which they are cut in two directions at right angles to each other to form parallelepipedic cream-filled wafers, which are equal in size and are called waferslices or Neapolitan-type slices, which are subsequently airtightly packages in packages of equal site, which contain, e.g., ten slides per package.
In other production lines of the wafer industry, large-size rectangular wafer sheets (350 mm.times.750 mm) are also baked in automatic wafer-baking machines and are processed in wafer sheet-coating machines to form an intermediate product consisting of cream-filled wafer blocks, which are cooled an in wafer-block slicing machines are subsequently sliced into small parallelepipedic wafer pieces or wafer slices or wafers of equal size, which in a separate part of the production line are coated with chocolate or another coating composition and are finally packaged in packages of equal size.
A production line for making bars of chocolate filled with wafers or wafer slices may be also used to bake large-size rectangular wafer sheets (350 mm.times.750 mm) in an automatic wafer-baking machine and to coat said sheets in a wafer sheet-coating machine to make an intermediate product consisting of cream-filled wafer blocks, which are cooled and in wafer-block-slicing apparatuses are subsequently sliced into parallelepipedic wafer pieces or wafer slices which are equal in size and in a subsequently succeeding single-bar plant used to make the chocolate bars filled with wafer slices are placed into molds for casting chocolate bars so that the wafer slices are integrated in the chocolate bars.
The wafer-baking ovens or automatic wafer-baking machines which are provided at the beginning of such production lines or of those parts of such plants which serve to make and process wafer blocks are provided witth a large number of identical wafer-baking molds, each of which is included in baking tongs and comprises two rectangular baking plates. Said molds are arranged in the wafer-baking oven in a row, e.g., in an endless chain, and revolve in the wafer-baking oven from a dough-pouring station, in which liquid wafer dough is poured onto the lower baking plates of the opened baking tongs, through the baking space, in which the wafer sheets are baked in the closed baking tongs, to a wafer-taking station, in which the wafer sheets are taken from the wafer-baking oven. To start the wafer-baking oven the chain of baking tongs revolves in an empty state and the oven is heated up to the desired operating or baking temperature and only when that temperature has been reached are the supply of dough to the dough-pouring station and the pouring of the wafer dough started. When a wafer-baking oven comprising a chain of, e.g., 80 baking tongs and operated to bake each wafer sheet within two minutes is to be shut down, the supply of dough is initially shut off and the chain of baking tongs is caused to revolve further until the last wafer sheet for which dough has been poured has completely been baked and has emerged in the wafer-taking station. About 75 wafer sheets are involved in that processing after the supply of dough has been shut off. In the wafer sheet-coating machine, 25 wafer blocks consisting each of three wafer sheets and two cream layers are made from said 75 wafer sheets and must then be processed in those plant portions of the production line which succeed the wafer sheet-coating machine. When the operation of the wafer-baking oven is to be resumed, two minutes will expire from the time at which the baking temperature has been reached and the supply of dough has been resumed to the time at which the first completely baked wafer sheet can emerge from the wafer-baking oven.
If the production must ba interrupted for a relatively long time, e.g., for a servicing or alteration of individual parts of the plant, it will either be necessary to keep the wafer-baking oven in operation at its operating or baking temperature from the time at which the supply of dough is shut off to the time at which the supply of dough is resumed, or the downtime will be prolonged by the time required to reheat the wafer-baking oven. For this reason it has previously been desired to perform service work and alteration in those plant parts of the production line which succeed the wafer-baking oven only during times in which the production line is anyway shut-down for other reasons, e.g., in the evening after the production has been stopped or during the weekend,
It is desired to minimize the loss of production in a production line when a broken slicing wire of a wafer block-slicing apparatus must be replaced or when the packaging film in a slice-packaging machine must be renewed or replaced. It is known that that object can be accomplished in that wafer block storage means are provided between the wafer block cooler, which succeeds the wafer sheet-coating machine, and those plant parts of the production line which succeed the wafer block cooler. In case of an interruption of the production, e.g., when the slicing machine is inoperative because a slicing wire has been broken, said wafer block storage means should be able to receive the wafer blocks made during that time without a need for shutting down the preceding machines or, if they are shut down, to permit a continued operation of those parts of the production line which precede the wafer block storage means until said preceding parts are empty. This is possible because the wafer block storage means receive from the wafer block cooler which have been made in said preceding parts until they are empty those wafer blocks. As a result, an unnecessary amount of waste wafer sheets and wafer blocks will be avoided.
Known wafer block storage means comprise a plurality of superposed transport belts or storage belts, on which consecutive wafer blocks are stored in a single file. Pivoted feed and delivery conveyor belts are provided, which indepence on the position to which they have been pivoted serve one of the transport belts and to transport the wafer blocks to and from the storage belts. Owing to the low adhesiveness of the underside of each wafer block the range of the pivotal movement of said feed and delivery belts is closely limited so that the capacity can be increased only by an increase of the length of the storage belts and a resulting increase of the overall length of the entire wafer block storage means.
U.K. patent application 2 232 948 discloses intermediate storage means for wafer blocks, which means are composed of individual independent stationary storage units, each of which is provided with a separate horizontal conveyor and which in the direction of conveyance succeed each other on a plurality of superposed levels. In said intermediate storage means for wafer blocks, stacks of wafer blocks are forwarded from storage unit to storage unit by the horizontal conveyor of the respective storage unit. Vertical conveyors are provided for transporting the stacks of wafer blocks between the superposed levels and each of said vertical conveyors moves an entire storage unit, comprising a separate horizontal conveyor, from one level to another. In those known means for an intermediate storage of wafer blocks that stack of wafer blocks which has been formed first is also taken first so that the residence times of the wafer blocks in the known apparatus vary only between the wafer blocks of a given stack. But a disadvantage of the known apparatus resides in that the sequence of-. the wafer blocks is not preserved and the differences between the residence times will increase with the required storage capacity and with the number of wafer blocks in each stack thereof. A further disadvantage of the known intermediate storage means for wafer blocks resides in that it has only a highly restricted storage capacity for wafer blocks which cannot be vertically stacked, such as wafer blocks having no cover sheet so that their top layer consists ct cream.